I first met Craig when he was a runaway. He had gone missing from a local children’s home and spent his days in Nottingham city center. Though only 13, he was tall for his age with distinctive blond hair, yet somehow he remained invisible to the authorities. No one was searching for him or the dozen other children who gathered in the market square. Most had escaped from care homes, some were skipping school, and a few, like Craig’s friend Mikey, simply didn’t bother going home. Mark, the youngest at 12, claimed he’d been missing from foster care for months and celebrated his birthday on the streets. They found comfort in each other’s company, sleeping together in an alley for about a week.
Craig took charge of arranging bedding, having picked up tips from more experienced rough sleepers. He showed me cardboard he kept behind a bin, explaining without much conviction, “It keeps the cold off your bones.” This was his introduction to homelessness.
It was 1998, and I was in Nottingham filming “Staying Lost,” a Channel 4 documentary series. The UK was facing a crisis with runaway children—a Children’s Society report estimated 100,000 went missing each year. Our series aimed to follow young people like Craig who survived on the streets, living outside the system. We documented his life as he moved from one unstable situation to another. On the surface, he appeared unfazed by the chaos around him, often staying quiet while observing the street dramas unfolding before him. It was hard to tell what he was really thinking or how lost he felt inside.
Occasionally, Craig would take a bus four miles to the 1970s housing estate where he grew up. I joined him one day, hoping to understand why he’d ended up in care. He was happy to show me around what he called his “manor.” Teenagers rode bikes too small for them, and trainers dangled from telephone wires. “They throw them up for fun,” Craig admitted. “There’s not much to do around here.” Despite this, he seemed genuinely glad to be back.
We visited his mum’s house, but the spotless surfaces and dusted ornaments revealed nothing about his past. Craig explained the house was full—his sister and her baby lived there, though his older brother had moved out. His mum made me tea but had little to say to her youngest son. She described him as “a nightmare” and said his behavior had become too much for her. After giving him what she called his “last chance,” she had placed him in care. It was unclear how much effort anyone had really made to help him.
Our visit didn’t last long. If Craig had ever had a room there, it was gone now, with no trace left of his presence. There was no reason to stay where he wasn’t wanted, so the 13-year-old caught the bus back to town to figure out where he’d sleep that night.
The novelty of cardboard bedding had worn off, and Craig began looking for more sheltered spots. He once called me from a run-down squat near the station where a man named Jock let him sleep in an old armchair. But it was too noisy to rest, with Jock’s friends showing up at all hours, sporting bloody noses and volatile moods.
When the weather was decent, Craig tried camping out on the Forest recreation ground, but he found it too exposed. The nearby red-light district was busy, and the constant stream of customers created an uneasy atmosphere. Shadows moved in and out of headlights, and Craig knew girls from children’s homes were working there. He’d heard stories of young boys selling sex in public toilets. This was the 90s, when exploited children were still prosecuted and labeled as “child prostitutes” or “rent boys.” After a couple of nights, Craig returned to town.
From time to time, the police would come across Craig in the city…He would be brought to the center and taken back to the children’s home. Putting up a half-hearted protest, he’d let himself be placed in the van. A few hours later, he’d return. No one at the home tried to stop him from leaving, and no one questioned what he was running from.
“He was trying to escape,” Jodie Young told me recently. “Running away puts you at risk of something worse, but you still believe anywhere is better than care.” Jodie had aged out of the care system herself. By 18, she was addicted to heroin and spent long hours begging near the Midland Bank cashpoint. Unexpectedly, she became a protector for Craig and the others, letting them stay in the flat she shared with her boyfriend, Dave, and their Jack Russell, Penny. “I knew they were scared,” she said. “I wanted to give them somewhere safe.”
A few years earlier, Jodie had stayed at Beechwood House, the same home Craig kept running from. If anyone understood why he fled, it was Jodie. Neither of them spoke about their time in care. Whatever the truth was, they shared an unspoken agreement to leave it buried. For a while, Jodie’s flat was a refuge. They had proper mattresses on the floor and sometimes shared Pot Noodles in the evenings. Jodie warned the young runaways against heroin, even as she struggled with her own addiction. Most importantly, everyone in the flat felt they were in the same boat—let down by those meant to care for them. They had to look out for each other.
By the time filming was ending, that brief stability had collapsed. Jodie and Dave were evicted, their little dog Penny was taken away, and the flat was boarded up. Craig, now 14 and a foot taller, was once again homeless. Even the police had stopped returning him to care. It felt like a dangerous turning point, so I took a chance and suggested he visit his mum’s. After an awkward start, she reluctantly agreed to let him stay on the sofa for a while. Rules were set, promises made, and a spare duvet was found. But I didn’t hold my breath. Things fell apart quickly, and soon Craig called to say he was on the move again.
For 18 months, Craig had trusted us to film his life as a runaway. Then, suddenly, Nottingham City Council intervened, claiming responsibility for him and insisting we had no right to film. They sought an injunction to stop the documentary from airing. After several grueling days of cross-examination in the Royal Courts of Justice, the ruling went in our favor. Craig had the right to tell his story, and “Staying Lost” was broadcast in April 2000, when he was almost 16.
I still hoped things might improve for him, but in the year after the film aired, police began arresting Craig for minor offenses. It wasn’t long before he was sent to a young offender institution. I visited him during that first stint inside. He bought me a coffee from a machine in the visitors’ room. He talked about training to be a mechanic but said he’d need a place to live first. He wasn’t sure how to manage that. By then, he was almost an adult—no longer a priority for housing. The statistics for care leavers were stacked against him. Soon, he knew his prison number by heart.
At first, he still tested his limits. Around 19, he came up with the idea of robbing a small supermarket by pretending he had a gun in his pocket. The terrified cashier handed over the till’s contents, and he ran off with the money. But it wasn’t like Craig. The next morning, he turned himself in. “I just couldn’t get it out of my head,” he later told a friend. “I’d scared that woman half to death, and I couldn’t live with that.”
Steven Ramsell first met him in 2004. “I remember sitting across from Craig in the old, dingy Bridewell police station,” Ramsell, a solicitor advocate, told me. “He was one of the first people I represented. If you look…”If you only looked at the surface, you’d see a shoplifter, a nuisance. Sure, he had committed plenty of crimes, but they were minor offenses—it was the only life he knew. Craig avoided breaking into homes but had become skilled at stealing phones and wallets. By age 25, he was a familiar face in the system and, according to Ramsell, barely able to cope in everyday society. “While I was out there, I just didn’t know how to live a normal life,” Craig wrote to me in 2017 from HMP Nottingham. “I always felt awkward and out of place. That’s no excuse for what I did, but I honestly don’t know where or how to begin.”
In his younger years, some people tried to help him. Those who remembered him as a boy allowed him to shower or crash for a few nights. A few even let him stay longer. But then Craig would “return the favor” by stocking the fridge with stolen goods, the police would show up, patience would run thin, and he’d be on the move again. “Craig is his own worst enemy,” people often said.
Over the next decade, I frequently lost track of whether he was in prison or out. Then, out of nowhere, I’d answer a call to an automated voice: “This call is from an inmate. All calls are recorded and may be monitored by prison staff. If you do not wish to accept, please hang up now.” Craig would then come on the line, explaining the tangled web of arrests, outstanding warrants, recalls, and remand hearings that had landed him back behind bars. “How are you doing, Pam?” he never forgot to ask. I’d try to share small details about my life, knowing how hard it was for him to picture the world I lived in. He enjoyed hearing about my travels and how my family was doing, and he knew I was always relieved to hear his voice.
He often asked me to send another DVD copy of “Staying Lost.” He took pride in that film, saying it was the only thing he had ever truly completed. He tried showing it to prison officers and volunteers, hoping they might understand what he’d been through and that someday someone could help him turn his life around. But the staff weren’t interested or equipped to delve into inmates’ personal histories. “You should make a follow-up documentary about me, Pam,” he’d often suggest. “That would show people what it’s really like, what happened to me next.” But television had moved on. One executive told me Craig simply didn’t have a “TV face.”
Time after time, Craig would walk out of prison with no place to go. He’d leave with good intentions, planning to meet his probation officer. But those appointments were stressful, filled with forms and applications he couldn’t manage, and they usually led nowhere. So he’d find a friend to stay with—someone doing him a favor. If he called me, I could sometimes hear the chaos in the background. “It’s fine here,” Craig would assure me, but things always fell apart quickly.
I remember how often Craig lost his few belongings, left behind in a hostel or at a friend’s place. There was usually a stereo—a “really good one”—that he couldn’t carry, and always a pair of trainers he’d forgotten, even though the ones he wore were nearly trash. One bitterly cold winter, his things were lost when he was transferred between prisons, and he was released from HMP Hull wearing only the standard sweatshirt and track pants. I called the prison, trying to get them to find clothes for him, but as usual, it was impossible to get through. Thankfully, the resourceful and caring chaplaincy team met him at the gate with a coat and scarf from lost property.
No one wakes up one day and decides to become a heroin addict, Jodie once…I was told, and I’m sure it wasn’t Craig’s choice, but that’s how things unfolded. During his longer prison sentences, he would sometimes join a drug reduction program and get clean. But drugs are easy to come by in prison, and they often became his way of coping. Craig once wrote to me, “I run back to the drugs because I know how to be a druggie. I know what I have to do or how to act, whereas in other situations, I haven’t a clue. Things get too emotional for me. I even panic when I’m just going to appointments, whether it’s the job centre or anything else—I just panic in my head. I feel like I’m 13 years old again when I’m out.”
By the time he was 33, Craig had 170 offences on his record and was spending less and less time outside. “He was institutionalized,” Ramsell told me. He had been through the system so many times, and any support he received was never enough to bring about real change. “There should have been another option, but there wasn’t,” Ramsell said. “And Craig always knew what was coming—back on the merry-go-round.” So, in the spring of 2018, the door of Nottingham Prison opened for Craig once more, and he was back inside.
In the months that followed, Craig was in touch more often than usual. At that time, Nottingham was one of the worst prisons in the country. It had recently been issued an urgent notification by the chief inspector of prisons, effectively placing it under special measures. Tensions that had been building for years finally reached a boiling point. Both officers and prisoners felt unsafe. Drugs, especially the dangerous synthetic cannabinoid spice, were readily available. Over 18 months, 12 prisoners took their own lives.
“I don’t even escape my problems when I’m asleep,” Craig wrote from his cell. “I live a nightmare during the day and when I sleep. I just don’t know if I can cope anymore. My head is a mess, and the days are just getting worse for me. I want a rest from myself.” His phone calls grew desperate, and his letters became longer. I worried if I didn’t hear from him every day.
Chaplain John Seeney played a key role in helping Craig get through that sentence. “We have to hang in there with Craig,” Seeney would tell me. Every Tuesday, Craig would ask to leave the wing to attend the prison chapel, where Seeney and the small multifaith team offered a space to talk and be heard. Craig never missed a session and even began writing poems praising the support he found.
Then, as if by a small miracle, when Craig was released in early 2019, Seeney managed to arrange a room for him in a house linked to a church group in Ilkeston, a small town near Nottingham. I took the train up to see him, and he met me at the station. He told me he’d been swimming and had visited the library to learn how to use a computer. He had the key to his shared house on a long string and let us in. There was milk in the fridge, and he made me a cup of tea. We spent a normal afternoon in the sunny backyard, and I still have a photo of him with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
Before I caught the train home, he took me to the church where he was volunteering, helping out at their daily pop-in café. The other volunteers, who were much older, were busy with an old tea urn and plastic boxes full of biscuits. There was some confusion about the “tea-towel rota,” and Craig stepped up and offered to take his turn. A woman handed him a plastic bag full of towels and dishcloths with a slightly puzzled look. As we left the church hall, I remember worrying about whether he had a washing machine or knew how to use it.
A few weeks later, trouble arose. Rules for ex-prisoners are strict, and trust is hard to earn. He ended up being thrown out for inviting “friends” over and throwing a kettle across an empty room. No more cups of tea. He was re…Sent back to prison. We often spoke about that afternoon, and I always reassured him that since he had managed to live independently once, he could do it again. But even as he listened, I felt he knew his opportunities were dwindling.
At 35, Craig was facing a longer sentence than usual after being recalled. On the bright side, this meant he might receive support that wasn’t available during shorter stays. A woman named Tara Tan had recently begun working as an art psychotherapist in Nottingham, partly due to the efforts of the ever-resourceful John Seeney. The chaplain thought art therapy could be a good match for Craig, helping him express what he couldn’t put into words. “He enjoyed using colored pencils,” Tan remembered. “He would color in and sometimes draw. But I think he used the sessions more as a safe space to vent his frustrations without fear of judgment.”
At first, Craig told me he felt nothing but numb, and that concerned him. “I’m emotionally shut off from everything,” he said over the phone. “It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.” Tan observed this too. “He struggled to open up because he was afraid of being hurt even more,” she explained. “You have to end each session on a positive note, knowing you’re sending someone back to their wing to be locked alone in a cell.”
Then, in July 2019, while Craig was working with Tan, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse released its report on how Nottingham council had handled allegations of abuse from children in care. “For decades, children under the care of Nottinghamshire council endured horrific sexual and physical abuse from those who were supposed to protect them,” announced Prof Alexis Jay, the inquiry’s chair. “Those overseeing the children’s welfare failed to address the extent of the abuse or take appropriate action.”
Beechwood House, where Craig had stayed between ages 13 and 14, was specifically mentioned. Violence was rampant, and staff who sexually abused children were allowed to operate freely. Children’s reports were ignored. Beechwood had finally closed in 2006, seven years after Craig’s time there. It turned out there had been a great deal to escape from.
The last time I saw Craig in person was in the autumn of 2019. He invited me to HMP Nottingham for a ceremony marking the end of a training course he’d completed on staying out of trouble. Over 12 sessions, he had learned skills for “a life free from crime and drug misuse.” Though I wasn’t entirely sure what secret formula he’d been given to avoid past mistakes, it was a day of pride. John Seeney was there, along with Tara Tan. The governor made an appearance, and cake was served on paper plates. A former prisoner gave a speech about turning your life around and how much was possible with determination and desire. I watched Craig step forward to receive his certificate, a hopeful smile on his face.
But in the years that followed, fresh starts became harder to achieve and shorter-lived. There was a growing sense that time was slipping away. Earlier this year, on May 10th, Craig celebrated another birthday behind bars. I heard from him just before his release, as usual.
“Hiya Pam, it’s me, Craig here on the email. Well, I’m officially 41 now. Just 16 more days until I’m back in the big wide world. I really hope it stays that way and I can finally turn my life around…”
In that email, he expressed hope about having a place to live when he got out at the end of May. He’d had a housing assessment a few days earlier and believed that, with the council’s help, he might not end up on the streets this time. So the countdown began to another release, another chance to start over. He promised to call once he was with probation to sort out his benefits. By then, he said, he’d know his new address.
It wasn’t…It was a surprise when he didn’t call. After about a week without hearing from him, the usual worry set in. I called a few people in Nottingham to see if anyone had seen him, but no one had. So I waited for him to show up like he always did before—or for him to call, probably from someone else’s phone, saying he’d missed his appointments, didn’t have bus fare to get to probation, or that he’d just been sleeping for days and was sorry.
But the call never came. On the night of June 29, 2025, Craig was found dead. Police told me a passerby discovered him slumped on some steps outside a house, just a mile from the alleyway where he had slept rough as a 13-year-old.
It’s still unclear which statistics Craig will be added to. He’ll definitely be counted among this year’s homeless deaths, which totaled 1,600 last year. He might also be included in the UK’s drug death figures, which reached 5,565 last year—the highest since records began in 1993. He could have been a victim of synthetic opioids; deaths from these drugs in England and Wales nearly quadrupled from 52 in 2023 to 195 in 2024. Or perhaps the drugs involved in his death won’t be recorded at all. The Office for National Statistics admits that drug misuse figures are likely undercounted. Whatever the case, statistics like these can only explain in the narrowest sense why Craig died.
I later learned that Craig had been released into emergency accommodation that final time, rather than the longer-term housing he’d hoped for. He was offered a bed through the Community Accommodation Service, which provides short-term housing for prisoners released with no fixed address. A Probation Service staff member told me it’s a last resort when “nothing else has been achieved.” Craig had apparently burned most of his bridges with them. “He struggled to engage,” they said, “but there are a lot of unanswered questions.”
I emailed Steven Ramsell with the news. “It was a sad day in our office,” Ramsell said when he called me later. He asked about the funeral, and I told him Craig’s immediate family had chosen a public health service, arranged and paid for by the council. “A pauper’s funeral,” Ramsell remarked. “The final tragedy in a tragic life.”
Craig’s cremation took place on August 11. Not wanting it to go unmarked, John Seeney attended and was allowed to say a few words. He told me he gave Craig’s coffin a little pat as a goodbye from us all. Ten days later, Seeney and I organized a memorial for Craig in Nottingham Prison’s chapel, where Craig had found some sanctuary over the years. Jodie Young, Tara Tan, and about 20 current inmates were there.
Seeney had printed an order of service on the chaplaincy printer, with my photo of Craig smiling in that Ilkeston backyard on the cover. I brought another photo of him at age 13, taken while he was talking about blackberry picking with another runaway. Even then, it felt distant from the life he was living. We placed it on the chapel altar in a frameless frame.
A couple of prisoners stood up to share memories of Craig. One, Jayden, who remembered robbing crack houses with him, shook his head in amazement that he’d survived a chaotic life on the streets while Craig had not. We laughed as people recounted wilder stories from Craig’s life, like the time he jumped off a bridge while being chased by police and luckily landed on a passing train. He always told the chaplain that God had scheduled it to arrive just in time.
Jodie was too upset to speak. After 30 years of heroin use, she will celebrate two years clean this December. She works as a drug peer mentor. “My heart feels like it’s been smashed to pieces,” she told me quietly. “What’s the point of me volunteering at drug services and helping save people’s lives when I can’t even save t”The people I care about?”
Craig often talked about wanting to donate his body to science, saying they’d learn so much from him. “But I wouldn’t know anything about it, Pam,” he’d laugh. And indeed, every effort is being made to determine what ultimately caused his death—whether it was long-term drug use, poor health, despair, or neglect. The autopsy is ongoing, and an inquest is scheduled. In a highly unusual step, the pathologist has kept Craig’s entire brain for a thorough examination. So many resources are being devoted to him now that he’s gone.
In the chapel, Seeney played a mystical South American tune that brought an odd sense of comfort, and we sat quietly with our own thoughts. As we prepared to leave that afternoon and officers were called to escort the prisoners back to their wings, I wondered what Craig would think if he could see us all gathered here. He’d never believe how much he is missed.
View image in fullscreen Illustration: Guardian Design
The best stories take time. Explore a curated collection of the Guardian’s top longform journalism, covering everything from politics and philosophy to personal narratives and true crime, all in one beautifully designed edition. In the new Guardian Long Read Magazine, you’ll find articles on MrBeast’s rise to YouTube stardom, Emmanuel Macron’s dealings with Donald Trump, and shocking revelations at the British Museum. Order your copy today from the Guardian bookshop. Listen to our podcasts here and subscribe to the long read weekly email here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs based on the provided statement designed to be clear concise and natural
General Beginner Questions
1 Who is Craig
Craig is a person the speaker met when he was a thirteenyearold child living on the streets
2 What was the speakers relationship to Craig
The statement doesnt specify their exact relationship only that they knew Craig during a difficult time in his life
3 What does I held onto hope that his life could change for the better mean
It means the speaker believed that Craigs situation could improvethat he might find a safe home support and a brighter future despite his difficult circumstances
4 What is the main point of this statement
The main point is to express a story of hope that was ultimately met with disappointment highlighting the tragic reality that some people especially vulnerable youth do not escape their hardships
Deeper Advanced Questions
5 Why does the speaker say Sadly I was mistaken
The speaker says this because their hope for Craigs improvement did not come true Craigs life likely did not get better and the outcome was negative
6 What are some common reasons a child might be living on the streets at thirteen
Common reasons include family conflict abuse neglect poverty aging out of the foster care system or involvement with drugs and alcohol
7 What are the typical challenges faced by homeless youth like Craig
They face immense challenges including hunger lack of safe shelter vulnerability to violence and exploitation interrupted education poor physical and mental health and difficulty trusting others
8 Why is it often difficult to help someone in Craigs situation
Systemic barriers deepseated trauma mental health issues and the individuals own coping mechanisms or distrust of authority can make sustained help extremely challenging
9 What does this statement teach us about hope and reality
It shows that while hope is a powerful and necessary force for caregivers and advocates it does not always align with a complex and harsh reality Its a reminder of the persistent and deeprooted nature of social problems
10 How can someone avoid the feeling of disappointment expressed in this statement when trying to help others
Its important to focus
